I've seen something similar in my field - industrial automation and testing. When a company wants to upgrade their testers, the testers we create are usually much more precise when compared to something created 20-30 years earlier. Often we have to modify our testers to match the results generated by these old, barely working testers.These companies request us to do it simply because otherwise they would need to change all of its literature, and explain to their customers why the products have slightly different specs then what they delivered last quarter.

Unfortunately, Our society is built on rotten foundations.